Ball gloves first became used in baseball soon after the game was invented. As the ball became hard and evolved into present "hardball" form, fielders began to use gloves both for protection of the fingers and palm and also to assist in gathering a batted or thrown ball into the pocket of the glove.
Much later in baseball history baseball batters began to use gloves. Initially, rosin was use to increase frictional griping of the bat, to prevent slippage and increase control. As lighter bats and harder pitching combined with the trend for players to conserve their hands and prolong their career, padded gloves specifically for batting have been developed. Padded gloves offer protection against tissue damage and bone contusion, and the prior art has addressed that issue.
Rector U.S. Pat. No. 4,071,913 offers a protective device which covers the entire hand including the fingers and wrist with a leather glove. Padding is provided at the finger tips, the palmar surface of the thumb, and the palmar skin from the wrist to the base of the fingers. (Other devices which cover the entire hand include for Hirschfield U.S. Pat. No. 4,121,824; Elliott U.S. Pat. No. 4,042,975; Barden U.S. Pat. No. 1,797,116, and Madnick U.S. Pat. No. 3,267,486, respectively.
An other protective device covers by means of flexible padded tubing with a thumb hole, the palmar and dorsal areas from the wrist to the roots of the fingers. (See Goebel U.S. Pat. No. 4,176,407.) This device is similar to the fingerless glove which leaves each digit completely exposed, such as in Kohler U.S. Pat. No. 425,887.
A third device covers a portion of each proximal phalanx or finger bone in addition to covering the metacarpal area of the hand. See Rawlings U.S. Pat. No 325,968; Dimitroff U.S. Pat. No. 3,606,614; Stansberry et al U.S. Pat. No. 3,501,773; DeMarco U.S. Pat. No. 4,183,100 and Toccoli U.S. Pat. No. 2,465,136 respectively, as illustrating examples of this device. All of these devices effectively cushion the hand but substantially reduce or impede the ease and the effectiveness of griping the bat.
One other device which has met with commercial success is described in U.S. Pat. No. 4,561,122. In this device, concern for the ability of the human hand to experience "tactilegnosis" or the unique phenomenon of cognizance-by-touch in which in the hand can "see" what it is doing without the aid of the eye. In this patent, a glove is provided which has shock absorbent material, for baseball or other activities, so that the digital sheaths which have the padding expose the distal phalanx that extend to cover the proximal interphalangeal joint, or its first digit equivalent. The glove has other features but its primary purpose it to provide touch or feel by exposing the tips or the ends of the fingers while protecting that portion of the hand which receives the shock. It is noted that the patent explicitly provides for padding over the entire area of the hand as evenly as possible to preserve the characteristic curve of the hand and preserve its ability to grasp the bat, for example, by wrapping the hand around the handle of the bat.
All of these prior art gloves are primarily concerned with padding various portions of the ball players hand so that tissue and bone damage is minimized or eliminated. Other than providing a dry surface for griping the bat, possibly with a leather or synthetic material which is dryer or has less slipperiness than the bare palm of the hand, none of these glove products have a positive effect upon the ability of the batter to hit the ball. With all of the above described prior art designs, there is a loss of "feel" in controlling the bat. More importantly, however, is the fact that the padding and the like causes a slower bat, so that a fast ball is harder to hit. In baseball jargon, it is easier to "jam" the batter with a "high hard one." With advent of the fast slider the need for a batter to wait before swinging is even greater although the time given to the batter to swing is less because of the higher velocity of the pitch. Accordingly, the use of a glove or gloves with padding producing a slower swing of the bat is counterproductive.
Accordingly, it is object of this invention to provide a glove device which does not slow or reduce the ability of the batter to swing the bat.
More particularly, it is an object of this invention to provide a glove device which in fact increase the speed of the swing to provide a quicker bat.
Other objects will appear hereinafter.